This Continuation Of Forever
by HalfshellVenus1
Summary: Wincest: Fifty sentences on the imperfect, forever mystery that is Sam and Dean together.


Title: **This Continuation Of Forever**

Author: HalfshellVenus

Characters: Sam/Dean (**Wincest**) and others

Rating: T

Summary: Fifty sentences on the imperfect, forever mystery that is Sam and Dean together.

Author's Notes: Chronologically ordered (with some episodes marked), to tell the larger Winchester story. These are 50 sentences on Sam/Dean for **1fandom**, again using the Fifth Theme set, but this time in a Slash version. The Gen version is **here**.

x-x-x-x-x

**Touch: **Whether accidental or purposeful, the first time Sam's fingers brush Dean's lips the question is answered before it even began.

**Dance: **_It's just casual, what we have, and it's not our future,_ Dean tells himself, _So if Sam wants to take some girl to the Prom I should be happy for him, right?_ but that feeling never comes.

**Red: **Sam is sixteen when Dad corners him in the kitchen for Round Two of The Talk, and he could die of embarrassment and nerves trying to hide the fact that he already learned all that from Dean first-hand and -mouth and whisper-touch-soft-sigh-_Yes_.

**Choice: **Dean could never have said _No_, not even deep inside himself, because he was made from the beginning to love only Sam, and his father has no idea that he's shaped Dean's world that way.

**Summer: **He never meant it to be Sam, and sometimes he hates himself for letting this whole thing start, but when Dean chases Sam through the grass and they wrestle-roll through the meadow, those teasing/tender kisses are some of the sweetest he's ever known.

**Open: **When Sam turns seventeen he begs Dean to take it further, and Dean refuses again and again; then one weekend Dad's in Biloxi and Sam eyes are full of everything, and Dean falls into Sam completely if only just to make that feeling _last_.

**Risk: **They have done it with Dad sleeping in the same room—not often, but when they're desperate—and when the weeks go on and there's no time apart, the night will come when they'll take that chance again.

**Sign: **Dean knows about the acceptance letter and Sam says he's going, but there's still time and a lot could happen before then; Dean tells himself that, every time Sam loves him more ardently, more desperately, because the way Sam's treating him _isn't _a goodbye, it absolutely isn't.

**Stop: **"You're really doing this?" Dean asks, and Sam says _Yes_ and gets on that bus to Stanford, like walking away happens every day, like this thing they have between them can be over just like _that_.

**Remove: **John's suspected for a long time now, and watching Dean practically dissolve after Sam leaves, he knows it's true; maybe this break will set things right, will take away the unnatural longing that binds his sons so strongly together.

**Compliment: **"You look like someone I know," Sam tells the green-eyed stranger, and though it's not the same it might be enough to let him forget that Dean's not here and it's been forever since he was.

**Try: **Sam's making a new reality for himself, one he can survive, and meeting someone special and going from there is just the way it has to be.

**Name: **It doesn't sound the same when Jess says it, even though he loves her; "Sam" meant so _many_ things when Dean said it, and he misses all the nuances that showed everything they were to each other.

**Compare: **This fluid softness is not what he's used to, it billows under his fingers where sinew and muscle and scars should be instead.

**Hello: **Sam doesn't call anymore, and Dean wishes he understood why, but he's stopped calling _Sam_ now because even the sound of his voice on the phone hurts so much it's like _dying_.

**Sell: **He doesn't talk about his brother much, and when he does he looks away, but Jess is sure there's something more going on under this casualness Sam keeps trying to sell her.

**Save: **Dean rescued him from fire for the second time, though it was too late for Jess, and Sam feels the circle coming round again to seal him in with his brother, his destiny, and this love that has too much power over them both.

**Pale: **This is not the brother he lost to college, this grief-stricken ghost, and Dean tries to be understanding, but he's worried Sam's not coming back—not the part of him that took Dean's heart and put it aside for a golden-haired girl with a smile like Promise.

**Bore: **Dean's eyes burn through his skin—Sam can feel them without looking—and he knows Dean's only waiting for him to trade in mourning for embracing what he still has left.

**Water: **They saved Lucas but not the sheriff, and Dean's still soaked in failure when he sees the look Sam gives him on the dock—like he remembers why he looked up to Dean all those years ago, like Dean is worth something even for just those few minutes.

**Please: **That's all it takes, just the word Dean's been waiting for, and when Sam pulls him down beside him and leans _in_ instead of away, Dean can hear it even if he isn't sure Sam actually _said_ it.

**Limit: **He won't give Sam everything this time, he'll keep something hidden away—Dean tells himself over and over that he'll be more careful now, in case Sam leaves again.

**Price: **One in awhile it still happens—he falls into it with some woman he meets on the road—and even if Sam doesn't care (though Dean's really damn sure he _does_), Dean will still hate himself for that weakness when it's over.

**Study **(Home): Missouri knew what the two of them were up to long ago, and when she sees them again she watches carefully within and without, and she knows it's still going on though from their hearts she also knows _why_.

**Scorch** (Asylum): Is this what's underneath Sam's come-and-go moods, this festering anger and resentment, because Dean's not sure which hurts more now—Sam's words, or the wounds from the rock salt Sam fired into his chest?

**Tough** (Asylum): Sam's trying to say he's sorry and Dean won't let him, not with the day they've had, and it's not that Dean's being cruel, it's more that he's afraid an apology would mean too much and all of that would show on his face before he could stop it.

**Listen **(Scarecrow): They're still fighting over Dad, and Dean's obeying and Sam's going to the source, until Sam's in a bus station and Dean's breaking underneath his practiced words of encouragement, and then Sam realizes that leaving Dean is always the wrong choice no matter what else is going on.

**Keep** (Faith): Dean snuck out of the hospital yesterday, and he's so pale-shaky-tired, but Sam's not giving up on him until he has no choice, not when magic or a miracle could make a difference.

**Pet: **So good to have Dean healthy—Sam can't stop stroking over Dean's skin, his hair, those lips that breathe so steadily in the night—and Dean sleeps on without ever knowing, without seeing how close Sam still is to just falling _apart_.

**Hands: **It's probably wrong that Sam's hands set Dean off, that those long fingers spreading on the table make him think of what else those hands could be doing, and where the hell is that waitress with the check?

**Great** (Route 666): Sam has no right to be jealous—hell, he'd planned his own future with Jess— and so he tells himself it's okay that Dean loved Cassie, and it's _great_ if Dean didn't come back last night because he found out he still _does_.

**Shadow **(Shadow): They're together and their relationship is complete again, after four long years apart, but Dean can't help feeling like there's always that possibility of waking one morning and finding that Sam is _gone_.

**Reflect **(Hell House): It's easy to get too serious in a life like theirs, so it's really not _wrong_ to tease Sam and prank on him like when they were little, Dean thinks, and yeah, it's totally not sick to remember those days from way-back childhood when Sam is lying there naked in his arms.

**Yes: **It can be a motel room, the forest, the backseat of the Impala, but when Dean moves up and over and all the way inside, it's here with Sam that he finds the place that feels like _Yes_.

**Nail** (Provenance): Dean keeps pushing Sam at Sarah, takes his own detour with those girls from the night before, and he throws it around like sleeping with these women changes anything, like what drives them from brothers to lovers is even remotely a _choice._

**Own: **Dean doesn't say it, but it's in his eyes and every single touch when Sam takes it serious and slow: Dean's heart belongs to _him_ and it always has, whether Dean wants to admit that or not.

**Certain **(Salvation): If he doesn't come back from this, if his mission happens to fail, John knows that at least the boys are together again and they'll carry each other through whatever happens next.

**Minute **(Devil's Trap): They've got to get Dean to a doctor—god knows what the demon did to made him bleed so much—but John's so worn out from fighting that he thinks in _Cabin… Car ride… Headlights_… with every moment an isolated eye-blink until that last becomes _screech-pain-crash-metal-black._

**Under** (In MyTime of Dying): He can't be too far away to come back-- he's right there on the bed-- and he sees himself lying there but not moving even though Sammy's waiting, Sammy's waiting, Sammy's—god, why can't he _wake up?_

**New: **This body is too beaten to survive in, but Dean struggles to stay in this new future with Dad and Sam.

**Next: **John doesn't know what's waiting, not for sure, but it doesn't matter: the boys have each other to carry out this mission or just their lives, and his ambitions are finally shaped around the family that _survived_.

**Layer: **The boys always stayed together before, with John in the third bedroom, but now it's just the two of them and Bobby offers them separate rooms; the way Dean jumps at the chance seems wrong somehow, like something between the boys is broken further down than just their Dad being gone.

**Noise: **It's too quiet in this room without Dean's sounds in the night, and even after four years without them, Sam can't sleep here alone—but he's got no choice, because Dean made it clear that he's not welcome.

**Give: **Sam doesn't understand why it has to be this—Dean's devastation and not his—that finally breaks down the walls Dean put up when Dad died, that finally lets Sam in again after so much waiting.

**High: **God, he's missed this so badly—missed all the touching and holding and _letting go_—and he knows it's his fault, that he pushed Sam away, but right now he's floating on those feelings and all that drama just seems so far away…

**Raise** (Crossroads Blues): _I never should have sent him, I should have trapped that demon by myself_ ticks on and on like a rosary of worry in Sam's head, with the knowledge rising up of how Dean wanted to—_could_ have—traded in _himself_ just hours ago.

**Tall** (Croatoan): They never asked anything easy, Dad or Sam, but killing them in case they _maybe_ turn is too tall an order, so even if-- _especially_ when-- it's Sam, Dean's answer is definitely _No_.

**Job: **It doesn't matter the way it used to, this life of hunting and tracking down evil, not when evil's hunting _them_ instead and Sam is either the target or the next recruit.

**Content: **In a ratty motel on the Rhode Island border, Dean wakes with Sam draped across him and just for a moment Dean feels he's found where he belongs.

**Always: **"Take care of your brother," Dad had told him from the beginning, and Dean's purpose never changes—even with their father gone, he can still hear that directive echoing all the way down inside his soul.

_-------- fin --------_


End file.
